Cosmonauts
by Glueball
Summary: A chain of murders swept across Unova, festooning the streets with corpses as something welcomed Touko to its phantasmagorical show of carnage. Each kill, a piece of the mystery, brought her closer to the truth, but nothing is more deceiving than reality.
1. Chapter 1

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." - H.P. Lovecraft

The room was infused with the smell of decay.

Plip-plop came the sound as something resembling liquid dripped from the cracked basins that protruded from the rust coloured walls onto the concrete floor, forming ripples as the droplets made contact with the dark, red puddle below.

If she had eaten something – anything – before this, she would have hurled all of it the second the noxious fumes entered her nasal canal. This is simply more than what she could handle.

Battling Pokémon often resulted in, more than not, fatal casualties, both purely incidental and intentional. Trainers were expected to bear such a morbid fact in mind. Getting rammed against, stomped on, hurled, thrashed, and clobbered by wild Pokémon while traversing unknown territories had already become second nature to her. She knew the risks and had still somehow made it out of them all pretty well. She thought that her journey had prepared her for any and all adversities especially when it had involved thwarting the master plan of a psychotic maniac in medieval garbs, preventing the complete dissolution of harmony between all of Pokémon and mankind, and successfully surviving the never-ending onslaught of battle-driven trainers who sought her out on a daily basis, imbued with only the murderous intent of defeating the newly-made champion of Unova.

She derailed her thought process before the revolting odour suffocated her in this god-forsaken room and dug through her bag for her Xtransciever. She clumsily punched a chain of numbers into her Xtransceiver, hoping – praying – that someone would pick up on the other end. She noticed then that everything had become deathly silent. The mechanical beeping sound of the Xtransceiver reverberated throughout the room, bouncing off the walls as if they were made some of nigh impenetrable substance X. She took a look at the Xtransceiver's screen and watched in horror as the signal slowly grew weaker and weaker.

_'Looker, pick up. Pick up now!'_

The contraption made one final attempt at connecting the call before finally terminating it. The dial tone, ringing in her ears, suspended thoughts as her brain tried to cope with the reality before her eyes.

Drip-drop came the sound of liquid again. A second later, the sound of padding paws followed. She swore she heard it then: something akin to the sound of nails scraping against the concrete surface. She turned, making a one-eighty, just in time to see the lingering traces of a shadow darting out of her line of vision. She took a step forward, for she is no coward as she had come to believe, and squinted her eyes to carefully examine the area where the shadow had been.

Thud.

Something moved from behind her. The sound of nails scraping against concrete returned and vanished almost as soon as it came.

She jumped to the side, careful to avoid being situated in a disadvantageous position as her right hand instinctively flew to the belt at her hips and drew forth a Pokéball.

Thud.

She threw the Pokéball and summoned her Emboar, who cautiously took his defensive stance when he sensed an eerie presence enveloping them in an invisible cloak of heightened apprehension.

Her Emboar growled as the familiar sound came again.

Was it a Pokémon? Or was it something –.

She hadn't noticed it then: her Emboar's thunderous roar as he rushed forth with a Flare Blitz attack, the awfully nauseous stench of rotting flesh, the skin cringing feeling as something hot and sticky lightly brushed itself against the side of her neck, and the scraping sound of nails against concrete.

She turned and eyes of nebulous red locked with hers.

Her eyes widened, but before she could utter a word, the darkness consumed her.

* * *

><p>So that concludes chapter 1, I suppose. I'm certainly new to this fanfiction business although I've held an account for over 8 years now, but never actually made any attempt to fully utilise it (orz). Time constraints and procrastination being the most prevalent of all causes, but whatever. Here's to chapter 1. I hope anyone that has read this enjoyed it to some degree. Or not. Because it's still too short a piece to really make out any kind of absolute impression anyways, IMHO.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

She woke to the cold chills of wind lightly caressing her exposed skin with what she thought to be the wispy feelers of some ghostly cephalopod.

She blinked.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The world swirled turbulently about her. Colours blurred and melted into one another, creating an indistinguishable vortex of amorphous shapes and forms.

She inhaled a lungful of air only to begin hacking away in rapid succession, causing the oxygen trapped in her throat to push against the trachea with such force that it had left her breathless and strangulated. Her eyes were droopy; she wanted to fall back into an unconscious state of semi-oblivion, but the burning sensation in her chest had long dispelled the last traces of grogginess from her mind. Slowly, she started to rise only to realise the loss of sensation in her right arm. She took a glance at it then and saw the awkward, twisted position it was in. Luckily, there was no open fracture, but the clicking noise her wrist made when she turned her hand to inspect her palm told her of its apparent interior damage.

Her shoulders were loose and slack, which made her already useless arm feel like a dead weight dangling annoyingly beside her. Her stomach churned and her intestines contracted as an immeasurable amount of pain surged through her. It felt like someone had used her abdomen as a punching bag, throwing punches at her while wearing knuckle bands that tore a hole through her abdominal wall. Her knees buckled and she dropped to the floor as if her legs had just been turned into some watery matter stripped clean of their preexisting bones and tissues.

Lying, sprawled on the cold bedrock beneath her, Touko took in the bleak sights and made out the form of the walls with their sharp curves and slopes as time went by.

She grimaced when she realised that there was no other way out except through a giant tunnel that stood out with a gaping hole in the wall for an entrance. It was obvious that wherever the tunnel would lead to, the chance of bumping straight into the arms of death was high.

She reasoned with sombre humour that she was like an insect crawling down the sticky, hairy, tube-like mouth of a Pitcher plant. Her slippery descent into the pit's digestive juices would spell death at an excruciatingly slow pace while the act of providing nutritional minerals for the carnivorous terror-plant, although encompassing the eventual dissolution of her body (which already seemed grotesque enough even without a creative imagination), could only be accomplished through the procedure of peeling skin from flesh from bones, layer by layer. The epitome of humiliation; Touko was sure that whoever was to witness it would most likely crack a few laughs, guffawing at her inattentiveness to her surroundings.

Massaging her legs in an attempt to revitalise them, she eventually leveled herself off the ground and began making her way towards the tunnel.

As she walked with a limp, her hand accidentally bumped against her hip and although she had expected to feel the belt clipped with pokéballs, she had actually grasped empty air. Someone had broken her arm and now, taken away her Pokémon. The thought of complimenting the perpetrator for their clever thoroughness crossed her mind for a mere second before she decided to mouth out a string of curses, all of which were directed at the ass who robbed her of her means of protection and escape.

With her team taken away while knowing nothing of their conditions, Touko pushed forward as quickly as her legs would allow. And despite the burning sting coming from the soles of her feet, fear, the driving force that fueled her mind, compelled her to move.

She wondered how her Emboar was faring in this morose pit liken to hell. Was he all right? Had he been injured? The questions nagged her and in turn, brought on a headache. Immediately clutching her head to steady herself, she waited for the pain to dissipate before continuing what she believed to be her longest trek yet.

True to her estimation, the tunnel went on with no point to call an end to its ridiculously circuitous pathway, and as she continued to wander through its maze-like structure – hobbling all the while – Touko found herself counting steps in order to alleviate her sense of unease that seemed to make her stomach flip, roiling the bile within her digestive tracts that threatened to spill out from within her. The stench that wafted through the tunnel was excruciatingly painful to her sensitive nose; she could imagine the nerves within the nasal cavity writhing in agony with one whiff of the smell at this very moment. Images of a carved up piece of spoiled meat went through her mind as she vividly recounted everything that she had seen before she had made that blasted phone call.

Recalling her memory, the picture of that deplorably-lit room along with the constant sound of dripping liquid paled in comparison to the foul stench that seemed to be coming from somewhere deep within an exposed drainage pipe. Although as a whole, the eccentric and perplexing nature of the situation were coaxing her to inspect the pipe's interior, the small, otherwise less portentous, pieces of furnishing in the room had captured her interest instead. Regrettably, her poor choice of action to examine the basins led to the sight of limbs and smears of dry blood. Clotting the basins' drains were globules of yellowish fat – all of which were thick in the scent of decay, but thankfully, none of the limbs looked to have belonged to a or several human beings. Like ink to paper, pressed onto the rims of the basins were the remaining marks of several creatures who saw to their final minutes, clutching in desperation to life, the meagre sums of their vitality. If anything, it was like a biology lab experiment gone wrong.

Shuddering at her recollection, Touko pressed on; standing still in the dreary darkness would only continue to conjure up and remind her of the gore and savagery she had been a witness to just some times ago.

Six hundred steps later, Touko was finally able to see the exit some feet away from where she stood. Having spent some time groping in the dark, she was relieved to have finally caught a spot of light up ahead. Picking up her pace, she cautiously moved towards it. However, no sooner had she taken a step out of the tunnel, the nostalgic sound of nails scraping against concrete began to ring in her ears. Accompanying that sound was the clunking noise of something mechanical coming from somewhere on the other side of what seemed to her like a large chamber. The image of a giant, industrial meat grinder somehow came flashing into her mind as nausea washed over her in waves. Her heart, beating skittishly, went into overdrive as she began taking her steps with bated breath.

The groaning sound of machinery, as cogs and sprockets clinked against one another, grew louder as she got closer. The stench, once barely tolerable, had now completely overwhelmed her olfactory system. Her nostrils flared as the odour wrapped its will-o-wisp-like tendrils around her, making her gag. The closer she got to the noise, the more the feeling of absolute terror clung to her.

Pressing the back of her hand to her nose, she quietly entered the room. Greeting her were the valves that protruded out from the walls as well as piston-shaped parts of a great, steely monstrosity that pumped volumes of unknown content out from several cylindrical tanks that stood in a column. Turning her head up, Touko saw the crankshafts that moved the piston-shaped parts in a four-stroke motion and gawked at the height of the ceiling. There was a furnace at the end of the large room, but its use was minimal. Further examination of the furnace resulted in the finding of a breadboard, an ohmmeter, and a voltmeter installed to its side. Multiple cords of wires all systematically connected to a circuit breaker were also present on the archaic heat producer. Baffled by the furnace's exterior design, she opened the furnace with elated curiosity only to be greeted by pitch black hollowness, smelling of soot. The furnace must have been several decades old from the looks of it and with its level of corrosion, one could only surmise that the thing had been sitting in the chamber, idling away the remainders of its life for some times now.

She closed the lid of the furnace before making her way towards a doorway several feet away. Peeking into the room, Touko saw that it was just another chamber of moving gears not so dissimilar from the other. Feeling curious, she decided to look inside in hopes of finding her Pokémon and perhaps a way up to the surface, but as she placed her left foot through the doorway, a canteen that looked distressingly like a hand grenade landed beside her and within seconds, exploded. Luckily, the explosion resulted in a burst of blinding light, but because of its sudden, unwarranted appearance, it had caught Touko off guard, causing her to lose her footing and fall to the ground. As soon as her back connected with the cemented floor, she led out a cry, accidentally drawing dust particles into her lungs. Her eyes had clasped shut, undermined by the intensity of the light.

"What the hell!"

Something then quickly crept up to her and began breathing down on her neck as it bumped its paws against her sides, cutting her with its rough skin. Its breath was almost palpable – thick and odious with the metallic scent of blood to hang in the air like cheap perfume as a complementary side-effect.

No sooner had it pressed down its paws onto her back and restrained her body, stifling the choking sensation buried deep within her, which caused Touko to wheeze uncomfortably against the floor, a hand grabbed onto the back of her neck and dug its fingernails deep into her skin. Smothered at the same time, Touko felt a needle prick the surface of her neck as it slowly pressed itself into the hypodermal layer of her skin. She struggled to wiggle free from her assailant's grasp but failed as the unknown fluid made its way into her body, paralysing her a while later.

"Consider yourself lucky, Touko."

Touko attempted to open her mouth to speak but no words came out as subsequently, the drug having taken effect, had caused her to become immobile. Breathing was also becoming a labourious task as the mere act of simply contracting her diaphragm exhausted her. Feeling as if her entire body had shut down, Touko relented and simply laid on the ground, languid and like the dead; she wasn't going to risk it and die from asphyxiation.

"It's pancuronium. Don't struggle against it if you wish to live."

Hearing her assailant's voice, being capable of seeing their figure with vivid clarity, and was fully aware and awake to take in her surroundings, Touko realised that it was impossible to dismiss their warning as nothing more than a sham. The drug could readily kill her if she was to ignore his warning and proceeded to forcefully enable further usage of her respiratory system beyond its already paralysed state.

"I had hoped to spare you of this, Touko, but now, it seems to be inevitable." The voice sounded faintly mechanical; cold and sardonic. Complemented with a deep, flat tone, it was undeniably male.

The man crouched down beside her and peeled off his hood. Entirely clad in dark colours, the man was wearing a gas mask completed with black shades; a pair of black Kevlar gloves with Velcro cuffs; black, knee-high, hobnailed boots; and a tactical vest between his monochromatic battledress and coat.

The ridiculous amount of black looming over her bore an uncanny resemblance to that of a SWAT unit member, but unlike the trigger-happy law enforcers, the man was actively trying to promote murder instead. There were no guns or any other killing instruments on his person and by the looks of it, the only thing standing between her and certain death was the mask man's willingness to chidingly push back his Druddigon whenever it got too close for comfort.

"Pancuronium will wear out in roughly an hour. Until then, I do hope you would be a bit more cooperative, Touko." He stretched out a hand and pushed away a few strands of stray hair from her face and cracked a laugh, sending a disturbing chill down Touko's spine.

Invasion of personal space was intolerable but drugging a person was more than enough a feasible reason for her to ram her fist straight into his mask for some much-needed payback and perhaps then feed him to some Carvanha she remembered sighting in the waters below Village Bridge. However, that would be considered murder and with her current stigmatised reputation, such an act would only further fuel the already kindled fire that threatened to jeopardise her life along with all those who knew her. The last thing she wanted to see was her mother's distraught face plastered on every corner and stretch of land there br in Unova simply because of her own fool of a daughter.

"I have your Pokémon with me; you just cannot have it back. At least not until I've ascertain the location of your last remaining Pokémon."

Standing up, the man drew out a few small objects from within the pockets of his coat and flashed them before her eyes. Catching sight of them, Touko automatically recognised them as her own, but regrettably, she would never be able to pry them out of his hands with pancuronium still circulating through her body.

"I'm sure these must mean something to you, Touko. I'll return them to you if you agree to my terms of exchange." Pocketing her pokéballs, the man leaned down close to her and gave her chin a tug, forcing her to look at him through the dark shades of his gas mask.

"You needn't tell me now though. I'm sure you would be most willing to assist me in the long run." Releasing his hold of her, he let her head drop and hit the ground with a thud. Touko would have twitched her eyes and winced in pain had she been allowed, but the ever potent drug had yet to relinquish its hold on her, leaving her sore, angry, and all the while, disappointed at herself for her own incompetence.

Dreading his words, she hoped that it would not have to end the way the man had predicted. To Touko, although all her Pokémon were of equal importance and value, deference was an act often called upon when in the presence of the one being that had provided her with numerous other possibilities than just the similar however gratifying route that each and every Pokémon trainer were expected to entertain. Zekrom, although a late addition to her party, brought about so much change in her life, that to regard it in her usual affable and accepting manner would be doing it injustice.

People do not catch legendary Pokémon for the sole purpose of reveling in the glory and fame that these Pokémon would bring. Legendary Pokémon do not succumb to the wiles of mankind with passivity. So, to treat Zekrom, the embodiment of one of nature's capricious and most unbridled of elements, with little to no respect of its own choosing and wants would only discredit her as a person worthy enough of its accompaniment. Touko neither wished to choose nor decide the fate of a creature whose wild nature is beyond that of her mortal control.

It wasn't like seeing which fruit, an apple and an orange, were to compete with one another in terms of nutritional values when proper inquiries about the nature of both fruits have been conducted. At the same time, it presented something problematic even when the choices were rather simple – if only convenient when such a question was posed to a mind that has been stripped bare of its ability to grasp humanity and all that it entailed.

Logically, one with experience in the wilderness would weigh the gains with the losses in order to determine the best course of action. No benefits are without liabilities and nothing is without sacrifise. Although, to be fair, the choices being made then were materialistic ones; ones that didn't accumulate to anything but the increase in the rate of survivability; ones that revolved around the haves and the have-nots; ones that were both of equal standing; ones that Touko could understand.

But now, the choices are different as they are being weighed on emotions – visceral imprints of the individuality of each and every Pokémon she has ever raised and cared for. Endearment and psychological relativity suggested the safety and return of her Pokémon while morality stated otherwise. To accept one would be to be relieved of another and Touko knew she wasn't the type of person who could choose with finite resolution while regretting nothing at a later point in time.

Regrettably stuck in between two things with no number tagged to them was like asking a happily married man with a brilliant outlook on life to choose whom a murderer should kill: his child or wife. The man would most likely say that he wouldn't want any of them to die so there was no way he would or could condemn or decide who was to be killed or not for it was unnecessary and incompatible with his viewpoint.

However, the man behind the gas mask hasn't the mind of a human being; he was merely mocking the idea of being one. Emotive reasoning was something beyond him simply due to the fact that it was paradoxical. Something only humans would be capable of.

If anything, Darwin's reality was perversely purgatorial. Forget demons and angels. There was a whole life cycle to wash herself in with the sins of indecision and sloth because man couldn't be less emotionally endowed than the rest of the life forms on the planet, but...

"You remind me of Elzbieta Lukoszaite. Do you know of whom I'm referring to?" Her assailant whispered out of the blue. His tone, half raspy and secretive.

"I keep seeing her in you. It's perplexing..." the man trailed off and quietly fell into silence. For a short while, he stood, slouching with his shoulders slack as if contemplating his next words with care. Those words never came as they were interrupted by the pounding sound of footsteps coming from somewhere off in the distance. Immediately, he stood, erect and stout; his frame, growing larger and more ominous than before. Turning his obscured face to Touko, it seemed to her that he was smiling – laughing in heightened anticipation of the madness that has yet to come.

Coming from the same direction as she had was a cap-wearing brunet and following closely behind him was a mop of green hair attached to the body of a man.

"Touko! Hang on!" they called out as they made their way over to her with haste.

Since being injected with pancuronium, barely ten minutes had passed. There was still so much time left before the drug would wear off – time that she did not have the patience to endure.

Worryingly looking ahead of her, she saw a row of tripwire running horizontally across from the nearest column of cylindrical tanks to another, and attached to each column was some explosive device whose design she didn't have much of a grasp of.

"_It's a mine with a tilt-rod fuse attached to a tripwire. I'm sure it's going to be a blast."_

If they were to run straight at her, the tripwire would trigger the mines and effortlessly damage the columns of tanks. Regardless of what was inside of the tanks, the collapse of these tanks would only end with fatal results.

Trying relentlessly to move some part of her body, Touko struggled to keep them away from her, but all was in vain. Her limbs just didn't – couldn't – move. Muscular paralysis was indeed a most troublesome thing to have.

Finally, they were nearing the column of tanks and as much as she had tried to direct their attention to the unknown dangers before them, the two of them simply continued to run towards her, each with a deep look of concern etched onto their face.

"_Do you wish to know what is inside of these tanks, Touko?" _His voice echoed in her mind as she watched the brunet and his companion move ever closer to her.

They were now just a few feet away.

"_Hydrogen sulphide."_

They were now at the tripwire and unknowingly, as she had predicted, pulled at the tilt-rode fuse. The sight of the rod arching, bending itself from its former ninety degree stance till it had reached an angle roughly the same distance as that of those between two fingers of an opened hand, caused her heart to come to a temporary stop.

A loud, ear-piercing boom erupted from each of the tanks and almost instantaneously, the shrill sound of escaping gas found its way to her ears. Surprisingly, the mines were not equipped with shrapnel and only fragments of the explosives flew across the room, missing Touko by a hair's breadth. However, instead of shrapnel, highly pressurized gas, like an angry snake, hissed away as it began to spill out of the large holes in the tanks. There was no shortage of poisonous gas to go around as each tank, although heavily damaged, continued to pump more and more of the hydrogen sulphide into the room. In this circumstance, Touko, with her already paralysed body, could never be able to cope with the additional complications brought on by the inhaling of hydrogen sulphide: a substance that could force her to utilise her already unresponsive respiratory system and by consequence, kill her with ease.

The tanks groaned and creaked as they buckled under their own weight. The precarious balance between the last slabs of metal offering their respective structure the last semblance of support and the swaying motion of the tanks themselves did nothing to calm her mind. Threatening to fall on her, the tanks swerved and slammed into one another, pulling the crankshafts and all that connected to them down from their place on the ceiling of the cave. The collision gave way to their collapse and with eyes wide open to her own demise, Touko watched, paralysed in both mind and body.

"_Death seems so imminent, doesn't it?"_

The crumpling masses of metal, stone, and loose cement blocks piling atop one another gave way to clouds heavy with dust and debris. What once resembled an underground factory now rested in disquieting ruination.

Bodies of flesh. Those of which pulsated with animate vivacity derived from the circulation of blood through the venous thoroughfares of the body from heart to brain and to the last digit of the human toe were nowhere to be found.

* * *

><p>AN: I haven't updated in roughly 3 months. I apologise for it since I couldn't bring myself to submit something that didn't look at least somewhat pleasant to my eyes. If I had to estimate, I'd say that this chapter went through approximately 10+ edits and revisions. Although it still looks incomplete and scrambled (cheaply written if I'm to be more precise about the wording of my work) in its entirety, I've finally given up trying to correct or revise it in any ways possible. Bah, and it's only 3900 words too. :U However, don't let that prevent you from enjoying the chapter, everyone. :D

As a heads-up note, updates are sporadic - as in, it's sporadically slower than everyone else's sporadically-timed updates. I apologise for this and hope that whatever it is that is keeping me from updating at regular and regulated intervals would cease to harass me whenever I find the time and inspiration to write and edit(?) the next chapter. See you next time. And hopefully not in another 3-4 months. *Slouches in seat, dejected*


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